PHOTO: Brian and Sharon Shattuck, owners of Cruise Holidays of Silverdale, Wash., celebrated Brian’s 50th birthday in New Orleans with style.

The Crescent City is one of the most vibrant destinations in the U.S. But beyond the fun to be had in New Orleans, the town was the perfect setting for the 30th anniversary convention for Cruise Holidays.

The vibe in the convention halls of the Hilton New Orleans Riverside May 15-18 matched the renaissance happening all around, as franchisees took in the sights and sounds of a city in the later stages of rebuilding.

The franchisees themselves and the industry they represent have weathered economic, perception and organizational changes over the past few years. But one of the happier changes for many of the franchisees on hand in New Orleans was to see Kevin Weisner as the front man of Cruise Holidays.

Weisner first served the brand in 2000 when it was part of ByeByeNOW.com and returned to Cruise Holidays as senior vice president during an organizational restructuring by parent company Travel Leaders Group (TLG). TLG realigned its leisure group under Vacation.com president John Lovell, who then turned to Weisner to move from VP of Cruise Deals and SinglesCruise.com to lead Cruise Holidays.

“It was such a natural fit,” said Lovell. “Kevin and I have worked together for so long, he is so engrained with the culture and the family atmosphere of Cruise Holidays. I was excited that we could make this move. I know the [franchise] owners are going to be excited as well.”

Weisner’s message to his franchisees when he took over the position in July 2013 was, “Be patient and you’re going to like the results.” Nearly a year later and just three weeks after a minor heart attack scare, Weisner gave definitive reasons to the convention crowd on why he delivered on that promise.

“I think the biggest part of the story of this transition is that it didn’t turn out to be a story,” Weisner said. “We kept continuity. We gave our franchisees more than promised, as we always tell them to do. Manage the expectation and exceed it. We feel like we’re in a better place than we have been in a long time.”

Changing Tides

One of the first big changes the company made was to rebrand its 20-year-old proprietary booking and management software, the backbone of all franchise operations. The rebranding from CruiseWeb to AgentMate was first introduced at the company convention in November. Major enhancements to the product included a new query tool. The update also included a revision to the dashboard, integrating the company’s extranet site, The Bridge, into AgentMate. And now, owners have a notifications dropdown when they log in to track, among other things, the progress of direct-mail campaigns sent by Cruise Holidays on the franchisees’ behalf.

Weisner and his staff also highlighted the continuous back-end improvement being made to CruiseHolidays.com and the ongoing progress of the company’s email marketing program. He said enhancements to the site, AgentMate and the email program will continue throughout 2014.

“A lot of the improvements may not be the sexiest stuff — these are efficiencies and resources we’re taking advantage of with the increased integration of Travel Leaders Group — but they allow our franchisees to focus on what they do best, in creating connections with their clients,” Weisner said.

Much of the talk around the New Orleans convention was focused on that drive to become invaluable to the client and on tips and advice on how to best create lifelong customers.

“We’ll handle as much of the rest of the process as we can,” Weisner said. “If you can nail the emotional connection, customers walk away thinking they’ll never want to work with anyone else. That trust is there and you are no longer just a business contact. You become a friend, a valued part of that person’s inner circle.”

Weisner also announced a number of new training initiatives including a sales skills summit held in June in Minneapolis for top performers looking to hone and recharge their sales skills.

Still to come is the Cruise Holidays Symposium, an exclusive chance for owners and agents to see a specific destination as they would sell it to consumers. The first symposium will be held Sept. 22-27 in Vancouver and feature the Globus Family of Brands, Rocky Mountaineer and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts.

The company also made it clear that they are focusing on social media, with the goal to drive more leads and sales for franchisees by helping franchisees develop their local social presence and leveraging CH’s growing social prominence.

Capitalizing on Growth

It was clear in New Orleans that, while the company is proud of its 30-year history, it is positioned to take advantage of the growing consumer excitement in the cruise industry.

“Listen, it’s been a rough few years, with a lot of the media coverage of isolated incidents,” Weisner said. “I’ve always told folks that these are isolated stories, that one story doesn’t tell the complete story, but for a while, these incidents defined the sector. We’re seeing that pendulum swinging back, there’s excitement in the industry, the cruise lines are taking back the narrative, really focusing on the experience and we’re ready to capitalize on that excitement.

“We’ve grown even in the middle of this uncertainty. That’s what strikes me the most,” Weisner continued. “Our franchisees stuck together, they kept telling the story and they’ve weathered the hardest part. We’re hearing more first-time cruiser excitement than ever. And I’ve heard it from every franchisee I’ve talked to.”

Even with the troubles the cruise industry has endured, franchisee ownership within Cruise Holidays has increased nearly 25 percent, from 210 franchisees in 2009 to 261 this year.

“There are some details that aren’t sexy, but from email impressions to media impressions, we’re showing our franchisees a tremendous amount of value,” Weisner said. “We’re getting more efficient every day at the corporate level and that’s value being passed on to the franchisees.”

For example, the company has grown from 11 million media impressions (instances of consumers reading stories about the company and its owners) in 2004 to 510 million impressions in 2013. Cruise Holidays also did 34 percent more consumer-facing marketing campaigns for its clients in the first quarter this year compared to the first quarter of 2013. The result was a 36 percent rise in total impressions with the biggest jump coming thanks to successfully targeted email campaigns.

One way the company is reacting to the needs of the marketplace is by developing its land sales program. It may sound like an odd thing for a cruise company to be offering deals for landlubbers, but Weisner and his staff think just the opposite.

“We’re responding to what we hear from our franchisees,” he said. “Offering up land sales and land-based vacations is just more value we are providing the consumer. We’re never going to take our focus off cruises and this industry, but it’s giving our franchisees a way to truly take advantage of the relationships they build. If they’ve spent all that time creating a trust and a connection with a client, why waste that capital?”

As far as what’s next for the company, Weisner was clear that innovation won’t stop, even though everything may not be shiny and new.

“We’re always looking for what’s next in today’s world, but we have done so much innovating [recently], with AgentMate during this past year, we’re really focused on making sure our owners are fully utilizing all the resources available to them,” he said. “We wanted to move quickly to show our owners that this integration and realignment at the corporate level would be a great thing for them at the local level. So now, we want to double back and make sure that our owners are really getting the most out of all these innovations.”

Most important, as he looked around the convention hall during the general session in New Orleans, Weisner was reminded about what makes Cruise Holidays unique.

“Listen, we have the corporate support and that’s a win for the owners and the consumer,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we’re a moderately sized crew, we have owners that have been with us for 25 or more years, and these conventions have become family reunions. It’s what made us unique when we started, and it’s what truly makes us stand out today.”